Age variations in personal agency and self-esteem: the context of physical disability.

OBJECTIVES

This study examines how age patterns in health control, self-efficacy, and self-esteem are influenced by age-correlated social status, health, personality, and social integration variables.

METHODS

Ordinary least squares regression documents age patterns in data from a 1985 community sample of 1,549 physically disabled and nondisabled individuals from southwestern Ontario, Canada.

RESULTS

Older respondents report lower health control, self-efficacy, and self-esteem. Less education, more physical impairment, poorer global health, less empathy, and less introspectiveness explain about 43% of age's negative association with health control and more than half of its negative association with self-esteem. In addition, age is associated more negatively with self-efficacy among the disabled. Social status variables conceal the strength of the age-by-disability interaction coefficient, while health accounts for almost an equal amount.

DISCUSSION

The findings describe how age-correlated personal and social factors contribute to, or statistically conceal, older adults' sense of health control, self-efficacy, and self-esteem.